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A reminder of HS2 costs

With Parliament due back next week – and the Cabinet meeting tomorrow at Chequers – we’ve looked at some of the Parliamentary written answers on HS2 costs.

These sums will be dwarfed by the amount that HS2 will cost to build – currently estimated as around £55 billion by the Department for Transport. What’s more, that figure has gone up by 66% since Philip Hammond (now Chancellor) was Secretary of State for Transport.

A: The table below sets out the spend on HS2 project in each year since 2009/10. Data for 2015/16 is provisional and is currently not included, pending publication of the HS2 Ltd Accounts shortly at GOV.UK, which will set out the precise level of expenditure for 2015/16.

2009/10 £m

2010/11 £m

2011/12 £m

2012/13 £m

2013/14 £m

2014/15 £m

Total HS2

9.43

24.3

54

207.6

318.2

362.7

It should be noted that this answer does not include costs to the DfT of work on HS2 – these were included in a written answer to a question from Lilian Greenwood in November 2015, who was at the time Shadow Secretary of State for Transport:

A:The Department has appointed a team of solicitors, Parliamentary Agents and barristers to support the HS2 project. Tim Mould QC is primarily employed to support the HS2 hybrid Bill process which gives those affected by HS2 an opportunity to present their concerns in Parliament. Since 2013 the Department for Transport has paid £679,567.10 to Tim Mould QC to support the HS2 project on Bill related matters. This figure is correct to 19 July 2016 and is exclusive of VAT.

In addition, since approximately 2010, the Department has also instructed a number of barristers, including Tim Mould QC, on other HS2 related matters, primarily litigation. These barristers will have been remunerated at government hourly rates agreed with the Attorney General, but it would involve disproportionate cost for the Department to provide precise figures.

The use of barristers to support the HS2 project is demand led and so it is not possible to forecast the fees that may be paid to Tim Mould QC in the future.

As we reported earlier, this is only part of the legal bill, as a FOI request from Camden New Journal revealed that the bill for petitioning lawyers for was £1.8 million over a 14 month period.

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Let may farron and Corbyn know at their party conferences you will not vote for the three parties at the next election which can be any time from now. No one knows when. You can say you know Hs2 is not a suitable rail project